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MORRISON, Colo. -- Joe Amato raced to his sixth victory at Bandimere Speedway on Sunday, beating Tony Schumacher in the Top Fuel final of the Mopar Parts Mile-High Nationals.
Amato had a quarter-mile run of 4.837 seconds at a top speed of 300.53 mph. Tony Schumacher, the defending NHRA Winston champion, finished in 4.913 seconds at 281.36 mph.
Whit Bazemore, Kurt Johnson and Angelle Seeling also won their divisions in the $1.8 million competition, the 13th of 23 events on the $45 million NHRA Winston Drag Racing Series.
Before meeting Schumacher, Amato defeated Gary Clapshaw, Bob Vandergriff, and Cory McClenathan en route to his 51st career victory. With the win Amato climbed to fourth in the standings.
"We were really the underdog today," said Amato. "Tony had been running strong all day. He was running 70s and we were running 80s. We just wanted to be steady and not beat ourselves and hopefully they would make a mistake.
"I don't know what happened to their car but they slowed up enough that we got the win. We have a new mission. We just want to be steady and get down the track. We want to make a move in this Winston points chase."
Amato is still recovering from the laser surgery he had on his right
eye nearly three weeks ago. The surgery prevented Amato from driving in last
week's Winston Showdown, the NHRA's all-star event.
"I was nursing my eye," said Amato. "But it's feeling good. To bounce back from eye surgery is a great comeback. To me this is one of my better wins because three weeks ago I was sitting in the doctor's office and they told me that I might not be able to drive again.
"Then to come back and win the next race, to me that's the comeback of my career. Someday I'll write my memoirs and that will be a special chapter in the book.."
No. 1 qualifier and current NHRA Winston Top Fuel points leader Gary Scelzi lost in the first round to the newly licensed Jim Cavalieri. Scelzi has never really had any success at the track known as Thunder Mountain. It was the second time in his career that Scelzi has lost to the No. 16 qualifier. He lost to Doug Herbert in 1999 in Richmond, Va.
Bazemore made the quickest pass ever at Bandimere Speedway to earn his first Funny Car victory of the season. He beat Scott Cannon with a run of 4.990 seconds at 301.20 mph.
Bazemore's pass was the first four-second run ever at Bandimere Speedway. He was the winner of this event in 1997 and was the runner-up last season. Bazemore was not qualified after the first three qualifying passes. He then took over the top qualifying spot and ran strong the rest of the weekend. He drove past
Tim Wilkerson, Al Hofmann and Del Worsham before beating Cannon in the
final.
"We came out an we qualified on the pole," said Bazemore. "Today Manzer proved that (qualifying) wasn't a fluke. It was just a tremendous effort by the entire team. My driving came around and I'm just real excited about the rest of the season. It is still a long season to go and we have struggled all year.
"We are not where we want to be. We want to be leading the championship. That's a long ways away but I think if we just work and work and work we can salvage the season. When you're doing well it's easy to be good. You don't find out how good you are until you're at the very bottom. The good teams will shine and come to the front. And these guys on my team proved they had it today."
It was the first win for the Kendall team with new crew chief Terry Manzer who was brought on a few weeks ago by team owner Chuck Etchells. Manzer had was tuning the WWF car earlier this year for Jim Epler who won the inaugural SummitRacing.com NHRA Nationals in Las Vegas.
"Chuck made a very difficult decision about a month ago," said Bazemore. "It has been an emotional time. We are very tight with (former crew chiefs) Tim and Kim Richards. But life goes on and Terry came over from the WWF team when they let him go. We had something to prove today and I think we all proved it as a team. They worked so good together today and nothing went wrong."
Johnson won his first Pro Stock event of the year with a run of 7.356 seconds at 188.04 mph. That was enough to hold off Darrell Alderman, who finished in 7.375 seconds at 186.28 mph.
Seeling won her fourth Pro Stock Motorcycle race of the year when hometown favorite Matt Hines left the line early. It was Seeling's 14th career victory,
four behind Shirley Muldowney as the all-time winningest female racer in the
history of the NHRA.
Seeling rode past Michael Pryor, Reggie Showers, David Schultz and Hines for the win. Seeling now leads Hines by 100 points in the standings. It is the exact lead she had last year after this event before losing the championship to Hines
by eight points.
"Man, this is awesome," said Seeling. "When I left home, we had no idea that we were going to win this race. Our expectations were to just come out here and hang in there. We didn't want to get slaughtered by the six-speeds and the Vance & Hines motors that are dyno-tested out here.
"I think we proved there's not even a chance of us getting slaughtered at any
track. The difference between last year and this year is I have a whole different attitude. This has got to be the most optimistic I have ever been at any race. Last year I think we were going down hill when we left here and this year we are going up hill. I want to win the Winston championship as bad as ever but I have a whole new feeling about it and it has helped on the track."
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